In today’s magazine world, where high fashion glossies are ruled by seemingly distant and taciturn editors focused both on trends and circulation, the thought that a creature such as Diana Vreeland ever existed is extraordinary.

The former editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who went on to a short-but-influential stint at Vogue in the 1960s before being notoriously fired in 1971, was a character and a personality in the finest sense. At least that’s the impression Amanda Mackenzie Stuart leaves us with in her meticulously researched “Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland.”